Aftercare
by AthanRG
Summary: She has made a habit of showing up in his moments of weakness. Set during HLV.


**Aftercare**

There has never been any grace upon waking up. In spite of whatever people thinks, Sherlock Holmes is actually a human being, not a machine; there is no on-off switch to be activated as he pleases, sprouting him into action in the blink of an eye. For him, the task of waking up is dull, almost tragic in the momentary lack of cognitive abilities, and he never relishes in the feel of it.

That's not to say long moments of sightless observation are required for him to figure out his current location; he sniffs once, twice, and the smell that fills his lungs is the characteristically antiseptic, tasteless one of a hospital. As if in confirmation, the even beeping of a heart monitor reaches his ears in tides, the distinctive absence of other sounds of the same range of frequency and volume indicates there's only one patient in the room. He almost wonders who that is—until he takes in his supine posture, the nakedness of his chest and what most certainly feels like a gunshot wound.

If it weren't by the persistent rasp in his throat where, he supposes, a breathing tube was attached, he would fully and unnecessarily express his annoyance. Medical procedures of any kind don't make him uneasy, but they're a waste of time in which he, most likely, could be entertaining himself with one of the puzzles those boring clients of his bring to his flat. If anything, he's grateful for his solitude; it isn't, after all, as if he can find the company of most people enjoyable, especially if forced to, and surpassing his own transport's distress will be exponentially easier if he doesn't have to put some stranger's mindless chatter on mute. At least John got something right this time.

However, as his body reaches the peak of his functionality, it becomes evident that the initial wave of discomfort he felt upon shedding unconsciousness away was nothing but a promise of the things to come. The full blow of pain hits him when he's least prepared for it, yet the chore of opening leaden lids and fumbling with the buttons that control his dosage of morphine—that if his doctors aren't concerned with exposing a man that has just reacquainted himself with cocaine to another addictive substance—seems to require a complicated, if not impossible, set of motions.

And even if it didn't, it's much easier to allow himself to be swallowed by the constructions of his own psyche, rather than dealing with the aftershocks of having had a bullet incrusted in his chest. The procedure in this particular kind of situation is now, unfortunately, so well-known by himself that the transition is seamless, and he fails to recognise the moment when the endlessly black back of his eyelids turns into the familiar hallways of his Mind Palace, pain blissfully receding once again into a distinct plane. Not that he complains—there are questions that need to be answered, and both the ache and the injury it represents are currently out of his own hands—the quicker he can figure facts and motives out, the sooner the mystery of Mary Watson will be solved and dealt with.

It occurs to him a visit to his Recording Room is in order, and so he sets the mental personification of himself into said direction. No matter how private, people always are—with only a handful of exceptions—disturbingly dull in their openness, and he's sure he can find the glaring obvious clues of Mary's own web of lies through bits of the admittedly fascinating conversations they've had during the last ten months.

Though, speaking of _glaring obvious_ things...

The sight that welcomes him as he steps into the room is one that he had been neglecting during his quick stroll over the well known halls, a certainly completely undesired one. As much as he likes to deny it, to insist that his mind is well over the physical restrictions of his body, both the incorporeal and the tangible parts of him are severely intertwined, and he, though only privately, admits that the downfall of one is the misfortune of the other. Furniture has been disarranged in a fashion he can't blame on the whims of The Woman, who wanders around his Mind Palace as if it were her own, even though she clearly enjoys of sorting out the data he's accumulated through a lifetime into patterns he'll be able to decipher, not without the consequence of bringing back memories of her (in the most inadequate of moments—truly her style).

This is something he hates—almost everything in his Mind Palace has an specific location, else it loses its purpose, hence he must oblige and clean up, a task that is as boring and time wasting as it would be if it actually required to get his limbs in motion.

The thrill of the mystery barely makes it any better.

* * *

He finds a total of forty-seven tapes labelled as Mary Morstan, and only four that include Watson as her last name. The beginning is the proper place to start, with the _oh-no-you's_ and the _oh-my-god's_ of the day he met her, the irony not lost to him—after all, he's just getting to know her. The status quo needs to be restored, the upper hand and the knowledge must be his again, so he loads the tape in the VCR and stares at the black television screen, finger hovering over the machine's buttons before he finally decides to press play.

There are, however, no visuals of the first time he saw Mary, not even the sight of John in The Landmark's restaurant with that ridiculous moustache plastered over his face. In fact, there are no visuals or sound at all, only the back of closed eyelids and the beeping of the monitor, rhythm still steady, even lulling. He can name the muscles of his forehead as they furrow in an odd sort of confusion that leaves nothing but annoyance in its wake. There's barely anything, _anyone_ that can slip through the thick walls the fortress of his mind has raised and guide him back to the so-called reality, but in this appalling state of his, the probability that something insignificant is the reason behind this unfortunate interruption is so elevated he laments the existence of matter at all. Eyes closed, he begins by listing the things that are different—or that he can now notice—in the room; the temperature has grown slightly warmer, and the colour behind his lids has turned a darkish red instead of pure black, so it's probably mid-morning or just noon. The air, though, feels stirred and holds traces of sandalwood and something deliciously spicy...

He swallows. Impossible not to feel provoked by the memories the complicated fragrance carries, even though he fights down the disappointment; this is simply a reaction to his self-inducted sensory deprivation, fragments of stories locked away in his Palace leaking through the cracks in the walls. He thinks of Moscow, nonetheless; the name in her passport had been Natalya and he had only been able to map out the curve of her smile through the pattern it imprinted on the canvas of his skin-

The weight on his bed shifts somewhere near to his feet, and he would start if weren't by his resistance to make any sort of physical effort, besides the one that requires the job of opening his eyes. For once he doesn't really want to, but it isn't as if being shot only four nights prior by his best friend's wife doesn't make his skin crawl with the slightest hint of worry; at last, paranoia takes the best of him, so he complies with the rational wishes of his brain. The eerie whiteness of sterility invades his sight all at once, and it's so blinding in its suddenness that he is surprisingly grateful for the dash of red in front of him.

Nail polish. Lancôme. 154M Miss Coquelicot – True Red.

He knows this because it's Janine's colour of choice, and he saw her applying thick coats of it into her nails six days ago, as she happily mentioned something or the other about her plans for—no, he quickly corrects himself, eight days ago. The slightly increased length doesn't match otherwise—though, if he has to keep on pretending to be deliriously in love with her, given the failure of his intrusion into her boss' den, he might as well be pleased with the additional millimetres. Janine has made a habit of running her fingers through his hair, which is very upsetting, really, considering he's trying to tune out most of their interactions, though he's deemed the experience would be far more enjoyable if there was a bit more of pain involved.

He never mentioned it before, knowing himself too well to know he'd end up commenting in a series of very particular and _very_ intimate past experiences, satin blindfolds in a cold Russian autumn night being merely a scratch in their surface. John might be the expert on women, but he did his research—apparently, it is never good to talk about one's previous girlfriends, even if those never held the joyous title during the ten months the happy dead couple spent together fighting against an international crime network.

There's a rustle of movement in front of him, and he promptly follows the path of that nearly enticing shade of red through the air. Except it isn't just air—those hands are flipping newspaper pages, and if he could see her face, he is certain he'd see the greedy way in which her eyes devour the words. He's done his fair share of observing Janine—how else he would have kept his ruse of being a perfect boyfriend (what a hideous word, he's not a _boy_) for so long—so he's also sure he knows the way she works, what gets her gears going. Distracted reader at most of times, there must be something absolutely enthralling, most likely scandalous given her usual choice of tabloids, to keep her entertained, especially since her supposed fiancé is recovering from a near fatal gunshot. A quick glance at the headlines to confirm his deductions and...

Oh. _Oh_.

Well, he supposes it could be worse. She could have, after all, said he suffers from erectile dysfunction or confirmed him as a bachelor (whatever that means, though the definition made John quite angry when applied to him). It's not that such an erroneous insight into his sexual life would affect him; after all, he's done pretty well with Mycroft's teasing and John's awkward questions at the most random of times, but he's sure somewhere in the world, God knows where, a certain Woman would have had a very good laugh at it.

As if on cue, Janine chuckles behind the newspaper, but the sound isn't warm and dreamy as the one he's gotten used to in the last month. It's rich, velvety, and it reminds him of late nights under high thread-count sheets in Montenegro…

"Only seven times in a night, Mr Holmes? I think you're losing your touch."

* * *

TBC...


End file.
